Tuesday, July 26, 2011

"Watching our system deal with the debt ceiling crisis — a wholly self-inflicted crisis, which may nonetheless have disastrous consequences — it’s increasingly obvious that what we’re looking at is the destructive influence of a cult that has really poisoned our political system.

And no, I don’t mean the fanaticism of the right. Well, OK, that too. But my feeling about those people is that they are what they are; you might as well denounce wolves for being carnivores. Crazy is what they do and what they are.

No, the cult that I see as reflecting a true moral failure is the cult of balance, of centrism.

Think about what’s happening right now. We have a crisis in which the right is making insane demands, while the president and Democrats in Congress are bending over backward to be accommodating — offering plans that are all spending cuts and no taxes, plans that are far to the right of public opinion.

So what do most news reports say? They portray it as a situation in which both sides are equally partisan, equally intransigent — because news reports always do that. And we have influential pundits calling out for a new centrist party, a new centrist president, to get us away from the evils of partisanship."

1. Moral ambiguity2. Lack of intellectual curiosity3. A confusion of respecting others with conceding points to others4. The view that fair debate does not mean conceding to poorly made arguments

These things are very bad for society, and they're worth fighting. You usually do a great job fighting them. But these things have absolutely nothing to do with "centrism" which really is just a nebulous sense that conservatives have some good ideas and liberals have some good ideas and we don't have anything else to call ourselves.

I can think of myself in terms of "centrism" (usually I think of myself as "center-left" or "moderate") without conceding an inch to the absurdities of the austerity crowd. The two things have nothing to do with each other.

7 comments:

What is it with modern liberals and their desire to pathologize/medicalize anything they disagree with?

Both sides are equally partisan and equally intransigent; anyone who takes the smallest amount of time to analyze the actions of "both sides" realizes this fairly quickly. And they have lots and lots of incentives to be that way (many of those incentives the result of so-called reforms of the political system - think of how being a federal politician is like a career in comparison to what it was like before the 1950s).

"Think about what’s happening right now. We have a crisis in which the right is making insane demands, while the president and Democrats in Congress are bending over backward to be accommodating — offering plans that are all spending cuts and no taxes, plans that are far to the right of public opinion."

This is one of Krugman's more laughable claims of late. There's a reason why the Democrats are offering the plans that they are - they are bending to the will of the populace in a matter of high politics. If the populace favored lots of spending and lots of tax increases they'd purse that position.

Krugman's intimate, personal relationship with Truth can be a bit much at times, yes? His PR team must have encouraged him to delete the phrase "evil doers" from the post...a small gesture to dampen the righteousness no doubt.- Ed

Ed - Krugman is simply wrong here. But your insinuations are wrong too. Lately he's been one of the straightest shooters around. Polemical? Sure. But usually much closer to the mark than just about anyone out there. I'm quite comfortable saying he's dead wrong here without buying into this "Krugman is a hack" line.

Gary -re: "What I love about partisans is when they point fingers in righteous anger at others and heartily castigate them for their partisanship."

One thing that can be said for Krugman is that he's never been afraid to admit he has a viewpoint. I expect he'd say "I am a partisan. And I'm right". He's pointed a lot of fingers in his time, but to my knowledge he's never pointed a finger at someone and said "you're bad because you're partisan".

It isn't a sweeping generalization; you see that sort of lazy rhetoric all the time (got to Real Clear Politics and count the number of articles from the Democratic/modern liberal side which use words like "crazy" in their titles).*** Note that I never, ever say things like "modern liberals are insane" or "conservatives are pathologically defective" - they're just wrong - they've made the wrong conclusions based on faulty data or even self-deception (but self-deception isn't insanity or a "mental illness" (if such things even exist)).

"Got data?"

As much as one can trust polling, yes. Do you have a better explanation? Is it somehow that the Democrats have been snookered or fooled or otherwise coerced into some sort of deal? I am always highly skeptical of claims like the latter - it is exactly why the claim that somehow Saddam fooled us into thinking he had WMDs was bullshit, though that is something the MSM bought into hook, line and sinker when it was proposed by the Bush administration. The Democrats know for the most part what they are doing and they are playing their cards based on the context in which they have to play them - and that context stopped being friendly to the concept of fiscal stimulus, etc. some time ago. Indeed, in our supposedly post-materialist world that ought not be surprising.

"Lately he's been one of the straightest shooters around. Polemical? Sure. But usually much closer to the mark than just about anyone out there."

Can I vomit now? Krugman pushes his own POV; what he is - to be entirely truthful - is closer to your mark, not closer to "the mark." Yeah, I know, you stopped being a libertarian when you learned some economics - of course that particular claim doesn't explain all the libertarian economists out there.

"He's pointed a lot of fingers in his time, but to my knowledge he's never pointed a finger at someone and said 'you're bad because you're partisan'.[sic]"

Isn't that exactly what he is doing in the language that you quote?

Here's the language in question:

"They portray it as a situation in which both sides are equally partisan, equally intransigent — because news reports always do that."

On the one hand you have the less partisan folks who are just bending over backwards to get something done apparently (the Democrats), and on the other hand you've got the "crazy" people who are uber-partisan (the Republicans) and, well, you get my point.

To sum up, Krugman is least impressive when he talks about politics.

***Conservatives on the other hand tend to use phrases like "reality based community" and like; it is a different way to marginalize people. It basically says, yeah, that's an interesting idea you pie in the sky thinker, but here in the real world, that's just non-sense.